


You Will

by quietprofanity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Exposure, Female-Centric, Humiliation, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-16
Updated: 2011-07-16
Packaged: 2017-10-21 11:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietprofanity/pseuds/quietprofanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven loses control of her powers at the wrong moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Will

They were making her angry, a little too angry.

As good as his intentions were, Raven never liked coming along with Charles to the Student Village section of Manchester. He wanted her to find friends, to talk to people beyond asking them what they wanted to drink or if they wanted any dessert. “The entire world is not made up of the children who were cruel to you as a child,” he would often say, stroking the spines of one of her hands as he held it between his own. She knew it was true. Charles himself was proof of that.

Yet at times like this, it was hard to believe it. Of the party of five, Raven sat scrunched between Charles and another young man on the corner of a table obviously made only for four people, her chair back against the wall. She spoke very little to any of the three boys – and to her they were boys, even if they got those tall, frothy beers by legal means – as they talked in endless detail about the latest LP they bought or a television show they’d seen. They barely acknowledged her. Charles occasionally looked at her, or told an anecdote about her to try to bring her into the conversation, but it soon came back to them: their studies, their life at the college, everything of which she wasn’t a part, all about the world she did not fit into and never would. Eventually she stopped trying to follow their conversation of chortling at each other’s half-explained jokes. She nursed her drink and wished she could have been born with the ability to teleport instead.

//You should say something,// Charles thought to her at one point.

Raven couldn’t help but narrow her eyes at him. _Why?_ she thought.

//They don’t dislike you,// Charles said. //Roger thinks you’re shy, and quite attractive. The other two find you standoffish but they like me.//

_Well, I don’t like them,_ Raven thought. Charles gave her a look – eyebrows raised, top of his head tilted in her direction – that essentially chided her to be fair.

Raven raised her head, sighed and pushed a lock of the blonde hair she was wearing behind her ear. Maybe if she faked trying to pay attention for a little longer Charles would leave her alone.

“Me and some mates were planning to head out to the States for the summer,” said one of them. He was blond and besides a sort of bump in his nose had mostly even features. Raven thought his name was Liam. “I just read ‘On the Road’ and, God, it was so brilliant I had to do a trip of my own. Have you ever been to the States?”

“Oh, Raven’s originally from New Mexico,” Charles said, smiling at her.

Raven wanted to turn her face into something ugly and freak him out, maybe extending her nose a few inches, but she tried to be pleasant. “That was a long time ago.”

“Is that so?” Maybe-Liam said. “Is it anything like Kerouac described?”

“Which part?” Raven asked. “The part where the guys stare into each other’s eyes for hours while high as if something profound actually happened or the part where they leave their wives at home so they can steal cars and act like pricks?”

Charles laughed a little too loudly, grabbed her on the shoulder and squeezed a bit. “Yes, Raven was none too impressed by the Beat poets when I read them to her. It’s something of a point of contention between us.”

The one with the dark hair and high forehead -- Raven remembered then his name was Gordon -– suddenly snorted. “ _Read them_ to her?”

Raven felt a sudden rage flare up inside her. She was about to ask him what the _fuck_ that was supposed to mean when Charles spoke.

“It’s a tradition among us,” Charles said. “We’ve done it since we were children. Raven’s very bright.”

“Well,” Gordon almost laughed, seemingly oblivious to Charles’ harsh, defensive tone. “It’s hard to tell with you Yanks, eh? Can’t even speak properly half the time.”

“You mother—” Raven was about to finish the second half of the word when a waitress came to the table with a basket of chips, well _crisps_ , Raven thought bitterly. Roger, who had thick brown hair and Buddy Holly glasses, made a noise of appreciation loud enough to try to defuse the situation, and it only made her angrier.

The man-children dug into basket, their hands swarming over it like moles trying to push their way into a small hole all. Charles held back, his efforts to find a way to stumble out of this situation clear on his face. While Raven knew it wasn’t right, she resented him for taking her here.

//We’ll leave soon,// Charles thought to her.

She sighed. _It better be quick_ , she thought, and reached for the basket.

Then she saw her fingernails were blue.

_Oh fuck_ , she thought, trying not to panic. She’d gotten better and better at controlling her powers throughout the years but sometimes when she was impatient something slipped. She concentrated, tried to make the blue fade like a bruise and turn pink.

“Oh!” Roger exclaimed. “Raven, I hadn’t noticed your eyes.”

Raven froze. She scrambled, trying to convince herself that he genuinely thought the eyes she had chosen for herself were pretty but Charles’ horrified face showed her otherwise.

Roger leaned forward, his eyes locked on hers. “They’re … yellow … It’s amazing …”

//Raven?// Charles thought to her. //Raven, what’s wrong?//

Yet she couldn’t think anything back. They were all looking at her now, trying to stare into her eyes. She kept trying to turn them back, at one point glanced down at her fingers to see if it had any effect and saw they were unchanged.

Then her feet began to tingle.

_No_ , she shrieked to herself. _No. No!_ She struggled but she could feel the false heels she had made disintegrate into the soles of her feet, could feel her spines push through her disguise skin and reveal the blue skin within. This experience wasn’t unknown to her, being so frustrated or exhausted that she could no longer hold her disguises and automatically changed back to her true form, but it hadn’t happened in years, at least not like this since she had been on her own. All of a sudden holding a disguise felt like trying to hold a heavy weight, or trying to keep back a sneeze.

“Woah, I’ve never seen anything like that …” Liam let his mouth hang open.

“It looks like a disease to me,” Gordon said.

“It’s nothing,” Raven said, although her voice didn’t match the pitch and tenor she had originally picked out. She could feel her spines poking through her calves, and then her knees. And then she realized that she and Charles had rushed to leave this evening, that she had looked for an outfit in her closet and hadn’t found any to her liking …

The spines were moving in her thighs now. “Excuse me,” she muttered and stood up, her mind torn between horror that this was happening and fury that it was happening in front of them. Charles called after her in her mind again but her only thought was to get away.

Raven pushed through the packed room, through the crowd of people standing at the bar. The spines were pushing through her backside, and she was suddenly sensitive as she pushed past people. A girl up ahead of her glanced in her direction and subsequently stepped back in shock, her cheeks glowing red in a way that made Raven feel especially embarrassed. Raven made a final bolt out of the room to the back of the bar, soft gasps and whispers echoing in her ears.

There were some women congregated near the ladies’ room. Despite her panic, her need to push past them and get inside, Raven registered for a moment that they were all very beautiful. The image of their sparkling eyes enhanced with makeup, their hair in shiny, differing hues curling about their faces or cascading down their backs, their smooth skin struck Raven so hard she wasn’t sure if the hot feeling inside her was desire or crippling envy.

She bowled through. One of them yelled out “Hey!” as she slammed open the door. As it shut behind her Raven glanced about the bathroom, saw a stall with a sign reading “Out of Order” and careened into it.

As soon as she had the door locked Raven lost the last threads of her composure. She threw her head back and moaned as she felt the transformation come over her. Her hair had already shrunk several inches in her journey to the bathroom, so there was no resistance as her spines ripped out of her bare back. Her fingers and arms were next, then her face, finally culminating as her breasts transformed. Spines pushed out of them and then lay back along her body creating a thick hide around her breasts.

She was naked. She was transformed and naked and trapped in the bathroom. It was hard to control her breathing. Her body felt as wrung out and as exhausted as if she’d just run a marathon. She could feel every indent of the tiles against her feet, the remnants of the cold winter air chilling her body. A terrible scent in the air told her just why this bathroom was closed. Yet she was at least in the stall, and that counted for a lot.

For five minutes Raven stood in the bathroom, resting her back against the wall, trying to find a place of calm. _I can do this_ , she told herself. _In a few minutes I’ll be ready and I’ll go out there and Charles and I will go home and this whole wretched night will be over._ After another five minutes she tried to transform.

Nothing happened.

“C’mon …” Raven said through gritted teeth. She concentrated, tried to push out her spines and turn her skin pale, her hair long, her eyes blue. Nothing happened again.

Her pleading to herself became a grunt of frustration and she slammed a fist on the stall, banging it so hard against the lock she heard a few of the women gasp. Raven sighed and tried to keep quiet, waited for the “What was that?” and “Is somebody in that stall?” questions to die down, to be replaced by the occasional flushing of toilets and running of water. She tried to force one more change but it was half-hearted. She could no more transform than she could teleport out of this shitty place.

//Raven … //

The voice in her head was clear, compassionate. Yet she didn’t respond. She was furious with Charles for putting her in this situation.

//Raven, please …//

She sighed, rubbed her fingers against her eyes. _I’m in the bathroom. I can’t transform. I don’t know what to do._

//Come on out.//

Raven tried not to mentally send Charles an image of her strangling him. _Aren’t you paying attention? I’ve exhausted myself. I can’t transform._

//Yes, I do. Just trust me. I see where you are. Come out of the stall and come back to me.//

Raven sighed and stared at the lock. _I hope you’re right_ , she thought as she undid it.

Raven opened the door and was greeted to an image of herself in the mirror – blue skin, red hair, yellow eyes. Another woman at the sink with dark skin and a puffy mouth pulled her lipstick away and smiled at Raven’s reflection.

“Is everything all right in there?” the woman asked.

Raven was shocked, but quickly realized what Charles had done. “The sign seems right,” Raven muttered.

The woman smiled and looked back at her makeup. Raven ran some water over her hands for appearances’ sake, marveling that she was cleaning her true, spiny hands in a women’s restroom and nobody was noticing. She wiped them on a towel and left.

Raven walked back through the crowd at the bar, naked and strange. Only this time nobody gaped at her in shock. In fact most of them ignored her, besides two men and an attractive older woman who ran their eyes over her from head to toe. Raven’s mouth went dry.

When she came near the table they all turned toward her. Liam and Gordon’s eyes were squinted in suspicion, although Roger had on a big, goofy smile. Charles stood up.

“Well, I think we ought to say our farewells this evening,” Charles said, pulling a small handful of white paper bills and laying them on the table.

Roger sighed in protest, “Must you …?”

“Yes,” Charles interrupted. He threaded his arm through Raven’s and waved his free hand to the others. “See you at lecture,” he said, and thought to Raven, //Let’s walk.//

Raven nodded, let Charles lead her out of the bar. Even though she knew what was happening, she couldn’t help but stare at the faces of the other patrons as they went, couldn’t help but marvel that none of them looked at her with disgust or fear.

Upon leaving the bar Charles pulled them into the alleyway. His pace was a little hasty for her liking, and Raven grew angry when she worried Charles might have been mad at her. Then he groaned loudly, rubbed his temples.

“God, I’d never tried that with so many people at once,” Charles said, still massaging his forehead and shut-tight eyes. “I’m sort of shocked, really.”

Raven crossed her arms and leaned back against the alleyway. “Sorry,” she muttered, trying not to look at him. “Thanks.”

Charles pulled his hands away from his face, blinked multiple times. “Don’t trouble yourself. In a moment I’ll hail a cab and get us home. An audience of one will be infinitely easier.”

“Yeah,” Raven said. She stared at the dirty ground, feeling sick. All of her anger had been replaced with a profound regret.

Charles seemed to sense it. He stepped closer to her. “Raven?” he asked.

She sighed. Raven thought of putting an image in her mind to make him understand, but this felt like something she should actually say. “When I was walking back to you, I wasn’t using my powers, but everyone looked at me like I was normal.”

Charles didn’t seem to understand. “I’d projected an image – ”

“But it _felt_ like they were all looking at the real me,” Raven said, her voice cracking a little. “I wish they had been. I want to be able to walk into a bar or down the street and not feel like a freak. I want to never have to hide ever again.”

Raven raised her eyes to meet Charles’ face. He didn’t answer her with words, but he mentally sent feelings of comfort to her. Raven sighed as Charles laid a hand on the back of her neck and rested his forehead against hers. She reached for his free hand their fingers intertwined.

“One day you will,” Charles whispered. “I’ll make sure of it.”

The End.


End file.
